Month: June 2016

When that letter to Jeremy Corbyn goes viral tomorrow, you will start abusing me. You will swarm and you will say whatever you think will upset me. I need you to understand this. I don’t care. It is water off a ducks back and I am well used to the wrath of the misogynist, racist, hard left, who work in symbiosis with the far right. I am a believer in QED. I have said you are abusive and now you will swarm because you are too stupid to know what you are demonstrating publicly. Bring it on. You demonstrate how you attack working class women to protect the elite and you demonstrate exactly HOW you create a seal round neo liberalism.

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My name is Lisa, I am a qualified social worker, and for 6 years I watched the deliberate exploitation of inequality as a response to austerity and I lived with it while I raised my daughter under attack by the Tories. During this time I watched the Labour left you represent, abusing people and demanding they didn’t discuss politcial consensus while you manufactured a Labour focused anti-cuts movement. THis particularly affected social work, vulnerable children, social care, and women like me. Single parents. My trade union said some cuts were ok as long as it was UNISON members hit repeatedly. I got a cast iron demonstration of how the working class were disenfranchised and I got it from the Labour left. Our trade unions were loyal to you but not us. You wanted us as objects in your identity and there was no opposition to austerity.

You are the protective seal around neo liberalism. I know that the Labour Party are looking to understand ieequality, am at LSE’s new Inequality Institute and I know that the problem we have goes much deeper than Labour policy. The economic advisor Thomas Piketty, who resigned from your economic advisory panel today, is an early challenger to synthetic inequality modelling and we are long way from understanding and addressing this crisis. But thanks to the labour left I got a demonstration of HOW the working class are disenfranchised over 6 years. I will always be grateful for this demonstration and will be using it as a chapter in my phd.

In the period where I was living with austerity I got a demonstration of what the country is seeing now. Your rentamob elite white male left, who are abusive to women, abuse people online and do everything they can to defend you, used to do so to protect your ability to white wash consensus on austerity for labour. .

On Thursday night while you were asleep I, like many people, was stunned as Britain voted to leave the EU. Even though I knew this was a catastrophe and is, I understood the punch that had been thrown and it was thrilling. But it is still a catastrophe. THe economic and political consequences of that moment have already resulted in the disintegration of our political system, our finance system may never recover and the people who will pay for this are people like me. Not you. The people I know. The people you already disenfranchised to have your Labour focused anti-cuts movement that didnt actually discuss austerity. My friend lives round the corner from a shop that was firebombed, I have other friends suffering racist abuse. I watched as Nigel Farage attempted to throw away all our negotiating cards at th EU parliament and read the world’s shock at the political vacuum that has opened. For you it was like Christmas had come early.

You only had one job when you woke up(FINALLY) on Friday morning. Your job was Leader of the Opposition. Your friend John McDonnell is the Shadow Chancellor, These are important jobs. We needed three things this week. 1- A government 2- an opposition 3- a plan.

Your views on Europe made your position untenable. THis wasnt a big deal. This happens. You should have resigned. The world needed Labour to send out politicians with platitudes about calm and unity, but you saw an opportunity. John McDonnell and yourself decided to attempt to take over the Labour Party and shut down democracy. The same rentamob of elite white activists who prevented discussion of austerity as equality was rolled back for working class women, decided this was your moment. On the eve of the most important day in British history, our Shadow Chancellor invited 10000 people to the lawn of Parliament Green. You deliberately generated visible crisis the night before the most important day in years. You did so knowing the world was watching to see if we had the political stability to get through this crisis. You knew the impact of this. So did I. You decided to hold the country hostage and tear apart your party because this was your moment. This is not your moment.

Like many women I have spent days being abused by your followers. This is not new to me. Nothing more threatening to the elite white left than a clever working class woman who understands their place in things. I have spent today trying to patiently explain to your followers that when you demand your rentamob takes precedence over parliamentary democracy that that is dangerous. They explained to me why your coup was necessary, why it was that your democratic mandate meant they had the right. They didnt know they dont.

They didn’t know you can only get democratic mandate in one place. From a voting booth. They didn;t know that in a democracy the ONLY way to get democratic mandate is in an election regulated by the electoral commission. They thought you could get democratic mandate to rule parliament through an internal labour leadership election by paying 3quid. They were disgusted when I said you couldn’t. I gave many of them the KS2 educational resources my daughter uses, so they could learn the basics about democracy. You have deliberately created a political vacuum. You haev done this at a time when fascism is a threat and the country is in crisis. While race hate crime is on teh rise. You held my country hostage at a time when we needed you to project the image of political stability and you have done so foryou own gain. It will be me scrimping on food next year, not you. I already had malnutrition once while your culture denied me the ability to discuss austerity.

I have some news for you Mr.Corbyn. You cant actually discuss inequality and the relationship between our social policy and economics and inequality faultlines through an elite white male left left selling fairy stories of default white working class man, and you cant be the mediators for that discussion. You have no purpose. You have exploited austerity, deliberately created a political vacuum and are attempting to replace parliamentary democracy with party buraucracy at a time when democracy has never been more needed. A week ago you were a weak leader who needed to resign, and a relic of a culture who have no purpose. Now you are a despot holding a country to ransom and it is the poor you wear as a badge for your political identity who pay for this, It is my friends who pay for this, The people I know. The same way they paid so you could have an anti-cuts movement th\t supported Labour and didnt discuss austerity. I know from discussions with people within the Labour Party, including the economist who just refused to work with you, and the evil Blairites you treat as a bogey man, that the Labour PArty ARE trying to figure out inequality. I know from the Inequalities Institute that they are not the only ones.

The question now Mr.Corbyn is not if not you then who. You have deliberately and recklessly endangered the economy. You have deliberately and recklessly threatened to etar apart our main opposition party and to leave us exposed to fascism. You have deliberately attempted to undermine democracy with your rentamob. The question is now what Labour will do when you are gone. How will they demonstrate they have completely rooted you out, your culture and the rentamob you call your mandate. A union funded private mob who exist only for your needs. Stop exploiting people like me Mr.Corbyn.

There is a part of me which is glad you are demonstrating what I have known about the labour left for a long time. The British public will never forget your attack on democracy at this time of crisis. You may be able to whip up internet mobs but we will never vote for you and you will be remembered as the man at th ecentre of the personality cult that tried to take the country hostage.

You have shown yourself to be unfit for ANY public office and the same goes for John McDonnel and Dianne Abott., I am writing this letter to tell you not to resign, which you will eventually do, but to tell you the poor do not need men like you exploiting us. And to put on record that it is your culture who ensured that last week people felt so disenfranchised they voted to leave the European Union. And it is us who will pay for your disgusting behaviour this week.

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The EU is in a state of flux. As is our relationship with it. This is not the final say in our changing position in a changing world.. There will be another referendum. At some point there will be a question that redefines our relationship with Europe. It will require informed debate. Here’s hoping that debate doesn’t demonstrate what this one did.

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The BNP. They were rejected at every turn. They got media attention, were treated as a serious party by the Westminster media, but never by the British public.

EDL- Used the language the Labour Party used to launch the War on Terror. Couldn’t mobilise at all, completely rejected by the British people. Shared a liking for social media with the left, entirely sustained by the anti-fascists and centre left media pretending theu were the voice of the working class. Given legitimacy by Blue Labour. Tommy Robinson eventually just took the media platform they gave him, because the EDL were rejected and he couldn’t mobilise them. Every time the left gave EDL support and airtime real life mosques were targeted and that life was used to threaten and harm real people.

UKIP- Given endless TV appearances and legitimised entirely by Westminster media.Rejected by the British public and used to legitimise racism and fascism in mainstream political parties.

Katie Hopkins- A career entirely based on twitter outrage. Given a media platform because she kept the left busy. Allowed to sell fascist hate speech and entirely a creation of the left.

The left need a construction of a white, racist working class. The left are rejected and so are the far right and their symbiotic relationship has consequences for the rest of us. The far right are an expression of fear and loathing of the working class and the people who pay for them being legitimised are blamed for their existence. Someone needs to hold our media culture to account. HOw that can be done I do not know. The centre left need the far right, the working class do not. They create the threat and then blame us for it and it needs to end.

The far right are an expression of loathing of the working class by the media cultures who disenfranchise us. An expression of their racism. Their xenophobia. Their fear. And their lack of legitimacy. Thankfully they will NEVER get a toehold with the British public. Who are not as stupid as those who make their living selling this bullshit.

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I don’t understand it. Who are these people who just decide that their identity is wrapped around a word dreamed up by a Spad for a few weeks headlines? Why are you choosing to identify yourself this way because someone blew a whistle at a newspaper you don’t work at? What is wrong with you?

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To say we have come out of one of the most toxic weeks in british politics in a long time, would be an understatement. On Thursday there is a referendum to decide if Britain should leave the EU, which has been about anything but the EU. To read the political press you would believe the UK was torn between Remain or Leave. A referendum with huge consequences for the UK’s political and economic future: tossed like a bone to prevent a few defections to a minor party with no sustainable support.

The threat of UKIP was never the threat of their electoral success. The British public have consistently rejected that politics. The BNP dissolved, EDL had to use mainstream political rhetoric and relied entirely on media attention given to them by the Westminster media and the elite left, and UKIP were never a threat.

The most UKIP could have enjoyed was one or two victories at the General Election, and they are entirely sustained by European elections people pay little attention to. The referendum was called to manage the risk of one or two defections from the Conservative Party to a party who are a non entity and enjoy a very stable but very low level of public support. A decision with huge long term consequences thrown as a bone to deal with nothing.

With no reason to call this referendum, no treaty change to discuss, no decision to make, this referendum has been turned into a referendum on popular fascism. In the words of Iain Martin, ‘immigration was deployed’, the dogwhistles were brought out and Westminster again orbited the politics of hate. A politics the decent and intelligent British public repeatedly and consistently reject.

If you read the Guardian and the New Statesman in the past few weeks, you would believe the north of England was in the midst of a popular movement to leave the EU. John Harris went seeking support for this, and in a video where even his solid leave voters struggled to show enthusiasm, an image was created of an amorphous working class in the grips of a rising tide of hate demanding popular fascism. Owen Jones obliged as he explained the working class he has never met but makes his living on are getting ‘Brexity’, and some very odd polling has shown evidence of the type of surge that characterised Scotland during the Independence Referendum. Only there is no evidence of this. Anywhere. Not a single tangible piece of evidence to support this.

I have spent weeks looking for evidence of this surge. I spent yesterday and the day before in Stockport, there were no posters in windows. The only rallies and debates have been staged photo-opps by funded campaigns. Remain campaigners and Leave campaigners stand isolated in shopping centres as we all try to ignore what is revealed by this referendum. There is no evidence of this surge in the towns surrounding where I live. The racist stupid working class that the Guardian needs to justify its position, do not exist. Nor is a surge to Leave the EU. I have obsessively asked every person I have met for weeks and the only universal feeling is that this referendum has exposed the worst of our political system.

I have seen reasoned discussion of the benefits of EU membership. I have seen almost universal exasperation that yet again a Westminster media culture have taken this country to the brink. I have seen horror and disgust at the tactics used to whip up hatred, and revulsion at the smug construction of a stupid working class, by a centre left culture who loathe us. I have seen ZERO evidence of a strong support for leaving the EU and zero evidence of support for the Remain campaign.

We need to discuss Katy Hopkins and Nigel Farage and who creates them, who benefits from their existence, and how they gain traction. Katie Hopkins is a product of the left wing outrage business model. Entirely. Her views are desirable for the centre left, who like Owen Jones, need to construct a racist and stupid white, male, working class, to base their ambitions on. It’s fine for Owen and his friends to base their livings on an invented version of the working class they disenfranchise, but when the politics of hate becomes real, its our communities and children that pay.

This white, racist, stupid working class are a construction of left and right politics run by twitterrage and newspaper headlines. Increasingly you can see they are a fantasy in a chatroom used by those with media ambition. They are a construction that suits many people. It is in the interests of Owen Jones and John Harris and Laurie Penny, to tell you there is a rising tide of hate in this country. That we urgently need the centre left to protect us from a white, racist, working class. It is in their interests for the Katie Hopkins business model of whipping up fascism to exist. The symbiosis of left and right powered by twitter is pushing us towards ever more extreme politics. But the fact remains that neither the swivel eyed right nor the far left and centre left have any public support. They both exist on the fringes of a media culture who maintained their grip on political media by newspaper, and now whip up hate on the internet to hide that their institutions are in crisis. They spend their time arguing about which dogwhistles to use, while we pay the price. Whether that be emboldened fascist groups who have been rejected, or in having our ability to fight austerity removed as the centre left use the entire Labour machinery to erase consensus on it.

We need to take our country back. We can’t have this any more.

On Thursday an educated, decent, and intelligent British public will send a message to these people. A message they will all refuse to hear. It’s not enough to deal with Katie Hopkins. Its not enough to deal with the Daily Mail. We need to discuss the entire political media, and ask why they so desperately need a white, male, racist working class, to base their bullshit on. And why they have so little understanding of a complex 21st century society and economy, that this is the narrative they are selling.

Am not in the Remain camp, am certainly not in the Leave camp. I will vote to remain in the EU on Thursday because this was never a debate about the EU. This is the most reckless political and economic act I have seen in my lifetime and when it is all done we need to take our country back.

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The Spectator couldn’t amend a piece when Toby Young searched for himself on twitter, then defamed a single mother, putting a 5 year old at risk, but could take this excellent work by Alex Massie down. Proud to have been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize at the same time as Alex Massie(when I knocked Toby Young out and got shortlisted so he knew not to pick on girls again). This is one of the best pieces written this year and am reproducing it here because The Spectator took it down.

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Events have a multiplier effect. And when they come in bunches the effect can be overpowering. This was already a sad and demeaning day, even before we heard the ghastly news a Labour MP, Jo Cox, had been murdered outside her constituency surgery in Yorkshire.

Politics is, figuratively speaking, a contact sport. It is a hard business because it is an important business. It matters and it matters even more when the stakes are so very high. But just as class will out at the highest level in sport, when the stakes are the very greatest and everything seems to be on the line, so character reveals itself in politics too. Even, especially, when it really counts.

A referendum is one of those moments when it counts. There is no do-over, no consoling thought in defeat that, at least, there’s always next season. No, defeat is permanent and for keeps. That’s why a referendum is so much uglier than a general election. The ‘wrong’ people often win an election but their victory is only – and always – temporary. There will be another day, another time. An election is a negotiation; a referendum is a judgement with no court of appeal. So character reveals itself. The poster unveiled by Nigel Farage this morning marked a new low, even for him.

The mask – the pawky, gin o’clock, you know what I mean, mask – didn’t slip because there was no mask at all. BREAKING POINT, it screamed above a queue of dusky-hued refugees waiting to cross a border. The message was not very subtle: Vote Leave, Britain, or be over-run by brown people. Take control. Take back our country. You know what I mean, don’t you: If you want a Turk – or a Syrian – for a neighbour, vote Remain. Simple. Common sense. Innit?

And then this afternoon, a 42 year old member of parliament, who happens – and this may prove to have been more than a coincidence – to have been an MP who lobbied for Britain to do more to assist the desperate people fleeing Syria’s charnel house, was shot and stabbed and murdered.

Events have a multiplier effect.

It’s not Nigel Farage’s fault Jo Cox is dead. It’s not Boris Johnson’s fault either. Nor is it the fault of Michael Gove or Dan Hannan or anyone else campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union. Most of these people (there is a glaring exception), like most of the people who will vote Leave next week, are decent and honourable people making an argument they sincerely (there may be one exception to this, too) believe is in the best interests of the United Kingdom. They are not responsible for Jo Cox’s death. The murderer is the only person responsible for that.

But if – as seems likely – the murderer had what are coyly referred to as ties to the far-right, if, as seems all too grimly probable, he was motivated by a hatred of what he felt Britain had become. If, as several witnesses have claimed, he shouted Britain First as he attacked Jo Cox, then it is reasonable – and necessary – to ask where he came from.

We hope, because doing so offers a shred of comfort even in horrid moments, that he was just a ‘lone wolf’ or a lunatic acting alone. We hope so because hoping that makes it easier to say, once the shock has worn off, that this was a singular event of the sort that cannot be predicted. Sometimes terrible things happen.

Well, so they do. But we know that even lone lunatics don’t live in a bubble. They are influenced by outside events. That’s why, when there is an act of Islamist terrorism, we quite rightly want to know if it was, implicitly or explicitly, encouraged by other actors. We do not believe – at least we should not – in collective guilt or punishment but we do want to know, with reason, whether an individual assassin was inspired by ideology or religion or hate-speech or any of a hundred other possible motivating factors. We do not hold all muslims accountable for the violence carried out in the name of their prophet but nor can we avoid the ugly, unpalatable, truth that, as far as the perpetrator is concerned, he (it is almost always he) is acting in the service of his view of his religion. He has a cause, no matter how warped it may be. And so we ask who influenced him? We ask, how did it come to this?

So, no, Nigel Farage isn’t responsible for Jo Cox’s murder. And nor is the Leave campaign. But they are responsible for the manner in which they have pressed their argument. They weren’t to know something like this was going to happen, of course, and they will be just as shocked and horrified by it as anyone else.

But, still. Look. When you encourage rage you cannot then feign surprise when people become enraged. You cannot turn around and say, ‘Mate, you weren’t supposed to take it soseriously. It’s just a game, just a ploy, a strategy for winning votes.’

When you shout BREAKING POINT over and over again, you don’t get to be surprised when someone breaks. When you present politics as a matter of life and death, as a question of national survival, don’t be surprised if someone takes you at your word. You didn’t make them do it, no, but you didn’t do much to stop it either.

Sometimes rhetoric has consequences. If you spend days, weeks, months, years telling people they are under threat, that their country has been stolen from them, that they have been betrayed and sold down the river, that their birthright has been pilfered, that their problem is they’re too slow to realise any of this is happening, that their problem is they’re not sufficiently mad as hell, then at some point, in some place, something or someone is going to snap. And then something terrible is going to happen.

We can’t control the weather but, in politics, we can control the climate in which the weather happens. That’s on us, all of us, whatever side of any given argument we happen to be. Today, it feels like we’ve done something terrible to that climate.

Sad doesn’t begin to cover it. This is worse, much worse, than just sad. This is a day of infamy, a day in which we should all feel angry and ashamed. Because if you don’t feel a little ashamed – if you don’t feel sick, right now, wherever you are reading this – then something’s gone wrong with you somewhere.

Jo Cox was, by all accounts, a fine parliamentarian and a fine woman. She has been taken from her family and her constituents but her death strips something from all of us as well. I cannot recall ever feeling worse about this country and its politics than is the case right now.

Psychological abuse occurs when a person in the relationship tries to control information available to another person with intent to manipulate that person’s sense of reality or their view of what is acceptable and unacceptable. Psychological abuse often contains strong emotionally manipulative content and threats designed to force the victim to comply with the abuser’s wishes.It very often comes with physical abuse, sexual abuse and follows fairly set patterns. THis particular trait is common in narcissists who cannot have relationships with other adults because they can only see those adults as objects in their own identity.

Sophie appears to believe that matters between parties in relationships are private. Not private to both of them, but private for one. Apparently it is not relationships with two whole human beings she is interested in. She feels that a fear of rejection or shame is sufficient that rape laws, consent laws and other laws which I assume include the domestic abuse laws around coercion should not apply. THis is common in abusive people. They cannot see another person as anything but an object in their identity and cannot perceive why consent from someone who is not a whole person, but an object for them matters. It does matter. We have to have rape laws and consent laws because it matters.

She cites the case of Gayle Newland whose repeated penetration without consent, also came with deep psychological abuse as she created a false reality for her victim. Anyone who has worked with this kind of abuser knows how devastating this is. Sophie cites section 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 it is an offence if a defendant intentionally penetrates the vagina or anus of a person, where the other person does not consent and where the defendant does not reasonably believe the other person consents. She cites Section 74 of the act gives the definition of consent: “A person consents for the purposes of this Act if he agrees by choice and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice.

Let be clear, if these two sections of legislation are a problem in your relationship you need to get some help and to not have relationships with adults until you can learn to see that adult as a human being equal to you.

Sophie then marches into textbook abusive and coercive behaviour patterns, stating that following these very clear laws puts her at risk. Now don’t get me wrong, I am fully aware of the risk of violence faced by trans women but actually when you tell someone you have the right to rape, deceive, emotionally abuse them, control their reality, because otherwise they are abusing you., that is textbook abusive behaviour. From any gender. It is also a sign that you are in a relationship with someone who has a more serious problem than not being very nice.

Apparently all this is necessary because if we retain rape laws, if people are protected in their right to consent, if she is not allowed to control the reality of another person so that their sexual autonomy is subsumed by her identity needs, then that is also reinforcing the bigoted idea that trans people are in some way abhorrent.

So we get to the core of the issue here. Sexual consent. When someone thinks you are abhorrent and does not want to sleep with you, that may not be nice for you. It isnt nice when someone doesn’t fancy you, doesn’t want to sleep with you. It stings. However, when you respond to that with coercion, emotional abuse, and the requirement of rape and consent laws being rolled back, you are asking for your right to be a sex offender and that’s quite a lot worse.

The right to rape, the right to coerce, the right to psychologically abuse does not become yourse because your identity is fragile as you transition. That is the kind of statement that should lead someone to ask you to talk to someone and refuse to be alone with you, not the type of statement that leads to an article in the Independent. Manipulative coercion and psychological abuse and rape are abusive behaviour in ANY relationship and the fragility of your identity doesn’t make that ok, nor does your gender, your sex, your sexuality or anything else..

Sophie, sex is only private when you are on your own. That’s masturbation. Otherwise its a relationship with two whole people. No you don’t get to lie, coerce or abuse someone so they will sleep with you because you don’t see them as a person. Your identity is not THAT important.